As crimes go, we don’t usually think of fraud in the same way we think of violent crimes like murder and rape. But one of Bernard Madoff’s victims sees it differently.
In a statement to Judge Denny Chin, former Fort Lee N.J. mayor Burt Ross, who lost $5 million in the scam, wrote, “Seven hundred years ago, the Italian poet Dante in The Divine Comedy recognized fraud as the worst of sins, the ultimate evil.”
Speaking outside the courtroom, Ross further expounded on his Dante reference:
“Fraud is the worst sin of all because it violates God’s gift to mankind, which is love. And so in the lowest depths of hell, Dante placed not those who committed violent acts, but those who violated trust.”
“I urged the judge to sentence him for the rest of his life, so that when he leaves prison, which means after his death, virtually unmourned by anyone on this earth, that he will then go down to the depths of hell where he will join those other people who are in the ‘mouth of satan.’”
If you read Madoff’s victim’s statements referenced in a USA Today story, you get an overwhelming dose of the financial, emotional, and in some cases, physical destruction that Madoff’s $50 billion Ponzi scheme wrought on his countless victims. In that sense, I got a feeling for Ross’s and Dante’s sentiment and why Judge Chin sentenced Madoff to 150 years.
As for whether fraud of this magnitude is worse than violent crime, that’s a heavy duty moral issue and I’m not much of a philosopher. But that’s just me. What do you think? Is white collar fraud of this magnitude finally being prosecuted and adjudicated as it should have been all along? And if so, where do you draw the line? White collar crime is committed every day, but there are only a handful of Enrons and Madoffs.
